Fuck yeah it’s the year of the Linux desktop baby!!!
i honestly just wanna express my gratitude to all the people who made linux what it is today over the last decades, the experience is incomparable to the one i had when first installing debian in 2007. i wish i were more skilled in order to meaningfully give back to this community.
and to all the newbies: thanks for joining our ranks! please dont be scared by the rather elitist attitude that some users display. we secretly all love you!
I think I first installed linux some time around 2009. I’m only just now starting to contribute to libraries, unrelated to linux. Its such a cool feeling growing along side the open source movement.
If you want to give back but don’t have coding skills, you can always be nice and help onboard new users! There’s always been this attitude of ‘linux is better’ immediately followed by ‘rtfm n00b’ when users try to get started. A more sympathetic crowd would go a long way.
It’s a good thing tfm is so good. I don’t use Arch but I’ve used the Arch Wiki so many times to solve my problems.
thanks for the piece of mind! while i do have some skills due to my work, its not remotely enough to work on linux. im gonna be a recruiter then…
Probably not a recruiter, but supporting those who are trying to switch or are needing support on forums like here or other places. Help them find solutions, be kind to them when they are struggling, encourage them if another user is derisive.
Yeah! There’s a lot more to open source projects than code. Even if all you do is edit the docs for punctuation and spelling mistakes you’re helping.
I’d like to thank my Christian Rabbi Bill Clinton…
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Anti Commercial AI thingy
I bought Windows 11 early on so I’m still using it to justify the purchase on my desktop, but I moved my OEM licensed laptop over to Debian a few months ago.
Can confirm that as soon as Windows 11 is no longer supported or it gets slightly more ass, I’ll be moving my desktop over to Debian or Arch or something as well.
With the advent of gaming becoming so much more accessible on linux either through native support or through something like proton, I am very hard pressed to find any reason to stay.
I bought two Windows 8 Pro key for $20 each at the peak of it’s hate. I’m reusing those bad boys until they stop being accepted, and when that happens i’ll just ignore the water mark.
Massgrave msft activation script
it’s not gonna decrease from there. linux only needs some product to push usage percentage, like steam deck. it’s key to the mass adoption but i also don’t care that much about percentage
Don’t forget some of the Linux prebuilt manufacturers
yeah but these manufacturers are few. imagine the percentage if lenovo sold every think device with linux pre installed on it to corporations. microsoft has 70 something percent just because of the ease of use
Now that gaming is effectively a solved problem thanks to Proton, Adobe Lightroom is just about the only thing keeping my desktop PC on Windows. My laptop is already running Linux. I’ve tried the FOSS alternatives but none of them fits my workflow like Lightroom. This is a me problem more so than a problem with any of these pieces of software.
It may or may not run in Wine, won’t hurt to try https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=5839
Adobe Lightroom is just about the only thing keeping my desktop PC on Windows
Have you tried any of these?
https://itsfoss.com/raw-image-tools-linux/Try running those adobe apps on a windows virtual machine. Use KVM with virt-managet instead of virtualbox. If the performance is acceptable for you, now you can use Linux as the primary os and only use the VM for adobe apps. VM boots faster too because you can just hit suspend and resume it again later.
Curious as to why someone would downvote this?
Probably because the average user is not going to figure out how to spin a VM to run Lightroom lol. It’s also a bit clunky compared to just opening it.
I kinda assumed anyone who know how to install Linux on their laptop wouldn’t have too much problem figuring out how VM works
And that is one of the reasons Linux isn’t at a higher market share. Linux is actually incredibly easy to install. Even back in 2008 or so, it was easier to install than windows. The live CD would give you a full OS with an install button. If you could install windows 7 you could install Linux.
Asking a user to then install something like virtual box and understand virtual hardware and disk images is a step up from that. Not to mention the clunkiness of it all.
You can run Windows in a VM just make sure you install the virtio drivers from Fedora
Adobe Creative Cloud doesn’t work in CrossOver.
Is there any way I could find out how much of Windows’ desktop share is coming directly from businesses?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
First hitting over 4% in February, their March data is now in showing not just staying above 4% but rising a little once again showing the trend is clear that Linux use is rising.
A number that is getting steadily harder for developers of all kinds to ignore.
It terms of overall percentage, it’s still relatively small but when you think about how many people that actually is, it’s a lot.
For those thinking it may be due to Steam Deck with SteamOS, it’s unlikely, at least not directly.
StatCounter gather their info from web traffic across over 1.5 million sites globally.
There’s going to be various other bigger factors at play here though, like Linux nowadays actually being properly good on the desktop.
The original article contains 296 words, the summary contains 124 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
what happened in 2021 that started this trend?
Probably a number of factors. Some I can think of that may have contributed:
- Steam Deck showing that gaming is possible on Linux.
- Windows 11’s hardware requirements pushing people to try Linux on older hardware.
- Microsoft’s recent enshittification of Windows by pushing Edge and AI so hard.
- KDE has been pushing to fix bugs and has gotten really good lately.
- Electron has made a lot of apps people really need super easy to build for Linux, so companies have started releasing apps for Linux.
- Flatpak has done the same, for distribution.
Did you dare to say something positive about Electron? Blasphemy!
Pandemic lockdown maybe? Everyone got bored a few months into 2020. By 2021 they finally figured out their wifi drivers 🤷
(I’m joking, I haven’t seriously struggled with wifi for a long time. I use Debian btw.)
I started with void cuz it sounded cool and it just shipped with the wifi drivers i needed. I got real lucky.
I started using Linux in 2021 never had any problems with drivers for anything. Debian also. It was just a pain in the ass to install until I figured out I had to download the iso with non free drivers or whatever. Glad they made this easier for Debian 12.
Now that I think about it, I actually first used Linux in 2021 too. For me it was because the laptop I had shipped with a HDD that was known for being prone to vibration failure, so while waiting for the warranty request to be approved I was running a persistent Ubuntu live USB
Proton making Linux better for gaming, which was the biggest excuse for holdouts. Steam deck showing you could not only game on Linux, but do so while sitting in a tree, with long term support implied by show of confidence from a large corporation.
Windows steepened its enshittification spiral.
The pandemic put a lot of people in a more experimental space, and they tried a lot of shit. And a lot of people picked up new skills. Including Linux 101.
And people saw authority in general start failing in a big ways. A lot of people started questioning shit. Including corporate hegemonies.
Windows 11 was officially released. That giant spike in late 2021 almost perfectly matched when Windows 11 was released. The Steam Deck was released in early 2022. So, from the graph, I would say the two main contributing factors are Windows 11 sucking to no one’s surprise and the Steam Deck exposing people to Linux gaming.
Windows 11 got quite a few people to look into trying Linux
I personally didn’t think Win11 was that big of a downgrade over Win10, But I also didn’t like 10 to begin with so I didn’t need much convincing.
Windows 11 is what finally got me to permanently switch over to Linux too lol
W10 release is what moved me to linux. My worstation got noticeably slower for CAD and my wife’s laptop became a brick
I’m guessing there’s a reduced pool of desktop pc users, thus Linux users are now slightly bigger in proportion? There has been big advances regarding Linux adoption, too.
I would say steam deck, both in actual installs and in raising awareness, but that wasn’t until 2022
I just got a steam deck and I’m surprised how well it runs games. It’s not quite as refined as a switch but it can run games were designed to run windowed in Windows with a mouse and keyboard. It can translate the game to run on Linux, the inputs to a gamepad and convert the game from being windowed to fullscreen. It’s impressive and if the games were actually designed for the deck I feel like it could feel as seemless as the switch.
It is really making me consider Linux for my desktop once Windows 10 reaches EoL. The only game I’ve found that doesn’t work is Destiny 2. Even the desktop mode on the deck is surprisingly nice
I remember a few years ago people got destiny 2 to work on Linux and Bungie banned those players. Fuck Bungie
And then they made a Linux native version but it worked only on Stadia.
Fuck Bungie.
The Steam Deck and it’s desktop mode is why I decided to try jumping head first into a single boot of Bazzite on my main computer, 4 months in and I haven’t looked back, even PDF’s are better in linux, no Adobe iron grip.
Adobe-free PDFs are pretty neat, though Firefox has a great PDF viewer/editor nowadays, which works well on Windows too.
When I was on Windows, I used SumatraPDF. It’s literally tiny and I never really missed any features.
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EDIT: sorry for comment spam! Jerboa having issues posting, hope it doesn’t show up and I tried to delete duplicates. XD
The best time to play with Linux as a daily driver system is now.
Play around with some virtual machines using VirtualBox for instance, do some installs, try distros, try desktop environments see what you fancy. Cool thing about playing with VMs is if you tank a system you can just delete and start over. :)
An old laptop to try a real “bare-metal” install to play with is even better.
This way, when MS says “Win10 is gonna be left to rot as security swiss cheese and your only option is Ai-enabled telemetry-infested account-mandatory nonsense.”
You can just comfortably jump to something you’ve already gotten familiar with!
The 'Deck can be used as a “real computer” too! It’s worth playing around in Desktop mode to just get used to how using Linux and KDE feels.
Wishing you all the best. :)
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You’re going to love Bazzite.
Honestly with this rate we may even reach 5% on end of this year or maybe even earlier Proton FTW
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
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I am in the top 4%
Haha! Team 4% FTW
The games I play work just fine under Linux. I’m EXTREMELY thankful for every single person that has contributed to Linux or the apps they can use.
If I wasn’t such a monkey I’d help any way I could.
Once I got the steam deck and saw basically all my games could run in linux, I made the change fully on my laptops and desktop computers.
There’s not a single windows left in my house.
I’m a former IT Manager and system admin. And I am so fucking frustrated and pissed at Microsoft’s bullshit that I want nothing to do with them, and nothing of theirs in my house.
I cannot believe I’m going to say this: But from and enterprise point of view, I Miss Balmer. Nadella is a fucking useless wannabe Steve Jobs tool who has zero concept of what made Microsoft what it is. There’s horror stories of dealing with Microsoft on a corporate level that attributed to me having a mental breakdown.
Writing a good bug report is oftentimes all the help that’s needed.
Translate!
Sorry Americans…
I feel the same way. I’m not a pro programmer or anything, but we can still be positive members of the community and help out users and share why Linux is a better alternative, and that’s gotta count for something! :)
I’m not such a monkey, and I could probably contribute if I put my mind to it, but I just don’t have the time… Instead I try to contribute documentation and money when I can. Everything helps!
At this rate we might just see the Year of the Linux DesktopTM on our deathbeds!
Easy. Every year is the Year of the Linux Desktop™.
the real Year of the Linux Desktop™ was the friends we made along the way.
Do you really need that the majority of users use the same OS you use? It’d be nice but not necessary at all.
It helps a lot. Because then, a Linux support won’t be such an afterthought, and you wouldn’t have to deal with stuff like popular games adding anti-cheat that bans Linux users.
Right now, some game developers aren’t even willing to enable EAC Linux support, which is like a one checkbox they need to enable for it to work.
The year of the Linux desktop was 2005
1991?
